


Down to Sleep

by mimesere



Category: Deadwood
Genre: Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, a lot of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/pseuds/mimesere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's power in names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Text in italics is taken from "The Autobiography of Calamity Jane" which can be found on Project Gutenburg.

_As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and out-door exercise and especial fondness for horses which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn of horses, in fact the greater portion of my life in early times was spent in this manner._

It's stealing is what it is. It ain't nothing but time, but it's stealing and it ain't a good thing she's doing. Nor is it a thing as her mama'd be proud of, seeing as it is her mama as she's stealing from, but there is only so much of walls and crying and being closed in that a body can take. So there's time and there's the stealing of it and there's a horse as needs riding just waiting for her.

She's escaping. Her brother's crying rises up like smoke behind her, high and wailing, like some wild creature fixing to die and it's something useful, gives her a thing to hold on to when she closes her eyes and finds someplace else in tall grass and dry dirt crumbling under her fingers. Montana. She's in Montana at the end of a trip she ain't taken yet and she's fleeing something awful behind her.

A skirt is nothing like useful for creeping about and her mama'll have something sharp to say about that too, but creeping about is what keeps her safe from the Sioux just past that hill there and some other heathen tribe over that hill there and her stuck in between, as like to be murdered and such as looked at.

*

_While on the way the greater portion of my time was spent in hunting along with the men and hunters of the party, in fact I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventures to be had._

They got families with them, children that need feeding and animals and folk as need it too. She puts in her time in the train, helping her mama take in shirts and such as need laundering. She don't got a knack for any of it except tending those as need special care. She watches them careful and patient, as they're like to die as soon as mend if a body don't pay close attention. 

And when they die, slipping away from under her hand like water, she fights her way out into the air and chokes on frustration boiling up out of her belly. There ain't nothing to say and if she screams the way she wants people'll think there's a disturbance in her skull and put her down like a dog. She stomps around, trying to pound the feeling out of her feet and into the ground which don't care.

One of the drivers watches her performance and she scowls at him. "What are you looking at?"

"Not a fucking thing," he tells her, but he don't stop looking.

"Then I suggest you keep your--" there's no one who cares near enough to hear her and then there's something like glee fighting the frustration in her stomach when she finishes -- "ugly fucking face turned away. A body -- that's me, you dumb fucker -- needs a breath of privacy when facing a fucking tragedy."

He smiles at her, happy as a fucking pig in mud. He sits his self back and calls her all manner of things, nothing as could be called derogatory to her character excepting that she is of the female persuasion with all its attendant parts.

She calls him a useless cocksucker and feels better.

*  
 _Mother died at Black Foot, Montana, 1866, where we buried her. I left Montana in Spring of 1866, for Utah, arriving at Salt Lake city during the summer. Remained in Utah until1867, where my father died, then went to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory, where we arrived May 1, 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyoming, with U.P. Railway._

They got men to see after the wagons and the stock, men to drive, men who do nothing but eat what they make with their stores and whatever tough dead animal finds its way into their pots and their fire. They got men for every damn thing a body can think of and mostly they ain't good for nothing except cussing and fighting and drinking. But even good for nothing is better than nothing at all and she does what her mama did before her, taking in laundry to put a little jingle in her purse. And if she does other things, well. It's no business of any fucking cocksucker that comes calling. She's got no shame for any of it, not if it keeps her and her kin fed and safe.

When there ain't no one to stand by her, she stands for herself, taking what she learned on that long trip to Montana and bringing down food to fill their stomachs and sleeping with a rifle to hand for safety. It's a hard enough road, but she's a hard woman and it's getting so that she forgets all the soft things she was before. She never was any fucking good at womanly things and she's not a body who will waste her fucking time on things as escape her expertise. 

Besides, Wyoming's a place to lay her burdens down. Her road sure as shit don't end there.

*  
 _It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes._

It takes the receiving of and deliverance of a beating to get the cuntfaced cocksuckers to leave her the fuck alone. She don’t need any of them and she lets them know this by the forceful application of her fists and her knees and her teeth. They let her know, by the same messengers, that they don’t look kindly upon a pussy as don't know her place. Nor do they take kindly to her clear words as to what lies between their own fucking legs as makes them fall to even so unnatural a woman as her humble fucking self. 

"You are a stubborn fucking cunt, Martha Cannary," says one of the other scouts just before he punches her in the stomach. He's new and he don't know any better and that is why she kicked him in the knee for stealing her whiskey instead of just shooting him. It's a cold fucking comfort but it's hers and she will be goddamned if some boy with the shiny not rubbed off is gonna take what she's earned. 

She gets the shit work for weeks after: the ugly, dangerous kind that no one else wants and she takes it because there's no fucking point in living without that she is stretching her legs all the way to the end of what she can see. Custer ain't one to waste what he's got and she's a better rider than most and a dead shot with any fucking gun she's given. 

*

_I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains._

There's no earthly fucking reason she should hear that one sound over all the other fucking noise them Indians are causing, but she does and the gunshot makes her turn in her saddle in time enough to see her captain reeling backwards like he's drunker than miner with a rich vein and a pair of clean whores. It's the work of no time at all to turn and ride back. She ain't lost a captain yet and no fucking redskinned cocksucker is going to change that while she's got a body lacking in death or weakness. 

He falls and she catches him, hauls him up safe with the strength of her own arm. There ain't nothing but dust in front of her as those cowardly fucking cunts ride off without them and death behind where the Indians are hollering fit for fucking Judgment Day and her stuck in the middle, like fucking always.


End file.
